Size Matters: Microservices Research and Applications

In this chapter we offer an overview of microservices providing the introductory information that a reader should know before continuing reading this book. We introduce the idea of microservices and we discuss some of the current research challenges and real-life software applications where the microservice paradigm play a key role. We have identified a set of areas where both researcher and developer can propose new ideas and technical solutions.Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1706.0735

DevOps impact on Software Testing Life Cycle

DevOps is a software development practice where the focus is on automating repetitive processes [1]. It has brought a change in the way organizations develop and deliver software products. The main purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of DevOps on the Software Testing Life Cycle (STLC). There is a lot of ambiguity and confusion as to what is DevOps and how it is practiced and implemented and what change it has brought to the software development and the testing process. In this paper, I have investigated how DevOps has benefited the testing process through automated execution of unit, integration, and workflow tests in the build pipeline. This was achieved through a literature review of studies on test automation and with the help of a case study which is used to list the qualitative benefits of Continuous Testing. The results of the case study show that DevOps has qualitatively benefited the software testing process and has shifted the testing process to earlier phases of the software development cycle

A microservice architecture for predictive analytics in manufacturing

Abstract This paper discusses on the design, development and deployment of a flexible and modular platform supporting smart predictive maintenance operations, enabled by microservices architecture and virtualization technologies. Virtualization allows the platform to be deployed in a multi-tenant environment, while facilitating resource isolation and independency from specific technologies or services. Moreover, the proposed platform supports scalable data storage supporting an effective and efficient management of large volume of Industry 4.0 data. Methodologies of data-driven predictive maintenance are provided to the user as-a-service, facilitating offline training and online execution of pre-trained analytics models, while the connection of the raw data to contextual information support their understanding and interpretation, while guaranteeing interoperability across heterogeneous systems. A use case related to the predictive maintenance operations of a robotic manipulator is examined to demonstrate the effectiveness and the efficiency of the proposed platform

Supporting a Hybrid Composition of Microservices. The EUCalipTool Platform

[EN] To provide complex and elaborated functionalities, Microservices may cooperate with each other either by following a centralized (orchestration) or decentralized (choreography) approach. It seems that the decentralized nature of microservices makes the choreography approach more appropriate to achieve such cooperation, where lighter solutions based on events and message queues are used. However, orchestration through the usage of a process model facilitates the analysis of the composition when this is modified. To benefit from the goodness of these two approaches, this paper presents a hybrid solution based on the choreography of business process pieces that are obtained from a previously defined description of the complete microservice composition. To support this solution, the EUCalipTool platform is presented.This work has been developed with the financial support of the Spanish State Research Agency under the project TIN2017-84094-R and co-financed with ERDF.Valderas, P.; Torres Bosch, MV.; Pelechano Ferragud, V. (2020). Supporting a Hybrid Composition of Microservices. The EUCalipTool Platform. Journal of Software Engineering Research and Development. 8(1):1-14. https://doi.org/10.5753/jserd.2020.457S1148

A mapping study on documentation in Continuous Software Development

Context: With an increase in Agile, Lean, and DevOps software methodologies over the last years (collectively referred to as Continuous Software Development (CSD)), we have observed that documentation is often poor. Objective: This work aims at collecting studies on documentation challenges, documentation practices, and tools that can support documentation in CSD. Method: A systematic mapping study was conducted to identify and analyze research on documentation in CSD, covering publications between 2001 and 2019. Results: A total of 63 studies were selected. We found 40 studies related to documentation practices and challenges, and 23 studies related to tools used in CSD. The challenges include: informal documentation is hard to understand, documentation is considered as waste, productivity is measured by working software only, documentation is out-of-sync with the software and there is a short-term focus. The practices include: non-written and informal communication, the usage of development artifacts for documentation, and the use of architecture frameworks. We also made an inventory of numerous tools that can be used for documentation purposes in CSD. Overall, we recommend the usage of executable documentation, modern tools and technologies to retrieve information and transform it into documentation, and the practice of minimal documentation upfront combined with detailed design for knowledge transfer afterwards. Conclusion: It is of paramount importance to increase the quantity and quality of documentation in CSD. While this remains challenging, practitioners will benefit from applying the identified practices and tools in order to mitigate the stated challenges

Automated Testing for Provisioning Systems of Complex Cloud Products

Context: The proliferation of cloud computing enabled companies to shift their approach regarding infrastructure provisioning. The uprising of cloud provisioning enabled by virtualisation technologies sprouted the rise of the Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) model. OutSystems takes advantage of the IaaS model to spin-up infrastructure on-demand while abstracting the infrastructure management from the end-users. Problem: OutSystems’ orchestrator system handles the automated orchestration of the clients’ infrastructure, and it must be thoroughly tested. Problems arise because infrastructure provisioning takes considerable amounts of time, which dramatically increases the feedback loop for the developers. Currently, the duration of the orchestrator tests hinder the ability to develop and deliver new features at a desirable pace. Objectives: The goals of this work include designing an efficient testing strategy that considers a microservices architecture with infrastructure provisioning capabilities while integrating it in a Continuous Integration (CI)/Continuous Deployment (CD) pipeline. Methods: The solution applies multiple testing techniques that target different portions of the system and follow a pre-determined test distribution to guarantee a balanced test suite. The strategy was tested against a set of prototypes to evaluate its adequacy and efficiency. The strategy definition focuses on mapping the type of errors that each test level should tackle and is, therefore, independent of the employed technologies. Results: The devised strategy is integrated in a CI/CD pipeline and is capable of comprehensively test the created prototypes while maintaining a short feedback loop. It also provides support for testing against commonly found errors in distributed systems in a deterministic way. Conclusions: The work developed in this dissertation met the outlined objectives, as the developed strategy proved its adequacy against the developed prototypes. Moreover, this work provides a solid starting point for the migration of the orchestrator system to a microservices architecture

Designing a Modern Software Engineering Training Program with Cloud Computing

The software engineering industry is trending towards cloud computing. For our project, we assessed the various tools and practices used in modern software development. The main goals of this project were to create a reference model for developing cloud-based applications, to program a functional cloud-based prototype, and to develop an accompanying training manual. These materials will be incorporated into the software engineering courses at WPI, namely CS 3733 and CS 509